[3.0] 10 Auras, LL AW/SRS Necromancer [Budget Friendly!]

Hello! This is a build I've been working on for a while now. I played it as my league ender in the 2.6 Legacy league and I enjoyed it so much I decided to play it as my league starter in the new 3.0 Harbinger league.

I've decided to write a rather comprehensive build guide. The build comes in two different versions, Summon Raging Spirits(SRS) and Animate Weapon(AW). Both variations use the same passive tree, the only place they differ is in weapon choice and playstyle.

The core concept of this build is simple. We utilize two uniques. The unique flask Coruscating Elixir and the unique body armour Victario's Influence, together with the Blood Magic keystone and the notable passive behind it called Mortal Conviction. Coruscating Elixir enables us to go Low Life without having to rely on Shavronne's Wrapping, Solaris Lorica or Esh's Visage. Because of this, we can use any body armour in the game. For this build, I decided to build around auras and Victario's Influence in order to buff our minions and party members significantly.

This build wasn't made for absolute beginners to the game. This guide was made under the assumption that the reader has basic game mechanic knowledge.

I've divided up the gear section in to two sections, mandatory and non-mandatory gear. Below you will find my recommendations for what to slot in every equipment slot and why. Remember that we don't need much Elemental Resistance on gear, as our auras put us at about 12% over the cap, grab some where you can in order to cap for the Elemental Weakness curse.

I've listed an aproximate price for each item based on their usual price, but remember that these prices can change from league to league. Use a tool like Poe.trade or Poe.ninja in order to get an exact value.

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Mandatory Items

Coruscating Elixir is the most important item in the build and this build is pretty much built around this item. This flask functions the same as a Shavronne's Wrappings or Solaris Lorica and prevents Chaos damage from penetrating our Energy Shield. However, it doesn't make use immune to Chaos damage.

Price:10-20 Chaos orbs

Victario's Influence is one of two core items in the build. It gives us significant bonuses to all our auras. It's a mandatory item and I would recommend obtaining this item as soon as you possibly can. This item is generally pretty cheap, going for a couple of Chaos orbs at most.

Price:5 Chaos orbs

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Non-mandatory items(Here are the items that I would recommend and would consider best-in-slot)

The Vertex is a very nice helmet. It gives +1 level of socketed gems and Chaos resistance on top of good Energy Shield and a nice amount of Evasion. It allows us to use a level 2 Enlighten instead of a level 3 in order to fit all our auras.

A rare Energy Shield helmet would be better on a very high budget.

Price:10-15 Chaos orbs

Steppan Eard give us a lot of Energy Shield, 30% Movement Speed, but most importantly, it makes us immune to Desecrated ground. Making maps with the Desecrated ground mod playable.

Price:10-15 Chaos orbs

Presence of Chayula is the best-in-slot amulet for pretty much every Low Life build in the game. It gives us an immense amount of Energy Shield on top of a ton of Chaos resistance and all attributes.

If you can't affoard it, grab an amulet with high % Energy Shield and # Energy Shield, Attributes and Chaos resistance.

Price:4-5 Exalted orbs

The Retch is a very nice belt to have, it increases our flask duration by a significant amount(60% versus 20% on other belts). It also gives us some Movement Speed during flask effect. The belt can be quite expensive, especially in temporary leagues where it might be hard to obtain. If you can't affoard it, you can use it's little brother, Faminebind.

Lower budger alternatives to The Retch would be a Crystal belt with the affix increased flask effect duration, try to get one with 20%. Perandus Blazon is a nice low level unique budget alternative as it gives 20% flask effect duration and some attributes and item quantity on top.

Price:3-5 Exalted orbs

(The Retch is created by combining a Feastbind, Faminebind and an Orb of Fusing in a Vendor recipe. This process is generally cheaper than just outright purchasing a The Retch belt. Keep this in mind!)

Shavronne's Revelation is a really strong unique ring. Equip it in the right ring slot. It gives us a good amount of Energy Shield and a nice amount of Energy Shield regeneration.

Price:4-20 Exalted orbs(The value of this item fluctuates a lot from league to league, depending on it's availability.)

An Elreon ring with the -5 mana cost of skills affix is great to have as this entirely negates the cost of our Scorching Ray. This is only good if you're playing the Aniamte Weapon version.

If you're playing Summon Raging Spirits, use a rare unset ring with +3 level of socketed gems for your Discipline.

Try to get as much Energy Shield and Intelligence on your ring as you can.

Price: N/A

Energy From Withinis placed in the Jewel slot next to the Melding Life/ES cluster between Witch and Shadow. In the rest of your jewel slots, you will want to equip jewels with Energy Shield and Increased Minion Damage.

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Your weapon is going to be decided on which version of the build you play, whether it's Summon Raging Spirits or Animate Weapon. If you're playing Animate Weapon, try to obtain the Summon Raging Spirit weapon as your weapon swap.

This is the primary weapon for a Summon Raging Spirits Summoner. A 6L Bow with +2 to level of socketed fire gems is a cheap and easily obtainable weapon, even early on in a league and will cost you less than 1 Exalted orb to create.

You obtain the bow through The Porcupine divination card set and use a Shrieking Essence of Rage in order to craft +2 level of socketed fire gems. The optimal gem socket colour(listed below in the Gem link section) will take you roughly 150 Chromatic orbs on average to obtain.

A Bow with +2 to level of socketed fire gems and +1 to level of socketed gems would be optimal. But the crafting process for this is significantly more complicated and expensive, I won't go in to that here.

The Soul Strike quiver is one of the strongest defensive quivers in the game and is the only one made specifically for Energy Shield. It gives us a nice amount of # Energy Shield and increases the start of our Energy Shield recharge by a ton. You will probably want to stack some Energy Shield recharge rate where you can in order to counter-act the downside of the quiver.

Price:35 Chaos orbs

Queen's Escape is the choice for Animate Weapon. It gives our minions a decent amount of damage and some life, but more importantly is the Minion movement speed affix which increases the movement speed of our minions by 80-100%. This really helps a lot with the clear speed of Animate Weapon.

Some people might have a difficult time sustaining a large amount of Animated Weapons, especially on lower level maps that has lower quantity. If you have this issue, look in to replacing the weapon with a Jorrhast's Blacksteel.

This section will cover how to level your character, how the passive tree progresses and some suggestions on how to make your leveling experience smoother. We level as Life/Energy Shield hybrid and transition in to our fully fledged end-game build at around level 70-75._____________________________________

You will want to obtain a 3L(BBR) Wand/Sceptre as soon as you can, and use a vendor recipe to craft it in to a weapon with +1 to level of socketed fire gems. This can be done as early as Act 2 if SSF, or Act 1 if you're willing to ask a friend for a Ruby ring.

+1 Fire Wand/Sceptre Recipe:

1x Magic Sceptre/Wand
1x Ruby Ring
1x Orb of Alteration

This weapon will be able to carry you for a while, socket Summon Raging Spirits together with Minion Damage Support and Melee Splash Support in this weapon, it will carry you for a long time.

If you find a 4L Helmet, you may want to craft a helmet with +1 to level of socketed minion gems. This can also be done through a recipe like the Wand/Sceptre, but it requires a bit more specific items to create.

+1 Minion Helmet Recipe:

1x Magic Helmet
1x Life Flask of Animation
1x Orb of Alteration

The Life Flask of Animation can be obtained through another vendor recipe.

of Animation Recipe:

1x Life Flask
1x Orb of Transmuation
1x Bone Spirit Shield

Either the Wand/Sceptre or Helmet will be able to relatively comfortably carry you to end-game._____________________________________

Progressing in to end-game

If you don't feel comfortable going directly in to maps with the leveling build, I would strongly recommend that before the final Kitava bossfight that permanently reduces your resistance and increases your XP penalty on death, that you farm up to your desired level.

There are two zones that I would recommend that you grind until your desired level.

Act 9: The Oasis

This zone is open, with good density and a beautiful tileset. The zone level is only 61, but you can easily farm this zone to around level 70 if you wish.

Act 10: The Canals

The monsters have been labeled by the community as "broken", and while they are strong, they shouldn't be very lethal to you. Keep your distance, keep your eyes open. Unlike The Oasis, it's a very linear zone and density isn't as good. If you can't map by level 70, I would recommend grinding this out until you're ready to either map or transition in to the end-game build.

Once you're ready to transition, simply refund the needed passives and re-allocate them. There are several side quests in the game the will give you refund points, do them before you transition.

Thank you for reading the guide and I hope you find it somewhat insightful. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in this thread, or if you don't feel comfortable asking the question in an open forum, you can contact me through private message on the forums or in-game.

It is budget friendly, there are two required unique items, both of which are cheap and relatively easy to obtain early on in a league. Slap those two on and you're good to go. Rest of the items I listed aren't mandatory, but best-in-slot, something you can work towards.

It is budget friendly, there are two required unique items, both of which are cheap and relatively easy to obtain early on in a league. Slap those two on and you're good to go. Rest of the items I listed aren't mandatory, but best-in-slot, something you can work towards.

Maybe just edit your post in gear so that not every item is classified ''Mandatory'', probably that's where confusion might ensue. Otherwise, interesting build, going to try it on friday.

It is budget friendly, there are two required unique items, both of which are cheap and relatively easy to obtain early on in a league. Slap those two on and you're good to go. Rest of the items I listed aren't mandatory, but best-in-slot, something you can work towards.

Maybe just edit your post in gear so that not every item is classified ''Mandatory'', probably that's where confusion might ensue. Otherwise, interesting build, going to try it on friday.

Already had it divided up in to mandatory and non-mandatory gear. Made the section divide a bit clearer.

What Jewels you use? its intresting build and after SRS nerf need to think something else to play. Also how you get your weapons going with totem spec? do you just drop some stuff on the ground? I was thinking to have channel spec for solo and group play totems.

Is there any way to take CI in this build and drop blood magic? If so, how would you handle this as a league starter?

-Edit, nvm.. Mortal Conviction.

You could easily grab CI and spec out of it when you get everything you need for the BM/Coruscating Elixir version. But even then going hybrid would be better and you should hopefully have currency for a Coruscating elixir before you hit end-game.

What Jewels you use? its intresting build and after SRS nerf need to think something else to play. Also how you get your weapons going with totem spec? do you just drop some stuff on the ground? I was thinking to have channel spec for solo and group play totems.

I'm gonna update the thread with jewel section in a bit. But it's pretty simple, try to aim for jewels with Energy Shield and % Minion Damage. % Start of/Increased Energy Shield recharge is also pretty solid. Energy from within by the Melding cluster is also a good option, though that's kind of a last upgrade type of thing after you have everything else.

I have a weapon swap with a 4/5L SRS setup. Open map(go in to new zone) -> Swap to SRS -> Kill a pack or two until there's 2-3 weapons on the ground -> Swap back to Animate Weapon setup -> Animate Weapons and destroy everything.

Totems and CWC do about the same amount of damage. Totems do get an additional gem link which is nice, but they also suffer from 26% less damage from the Spell Totem support. I feel as though Totems are way clunkier. I'd recommend CWC, but try both and see if you like totems. Just drop the totem and it will cast Animate Weapon on nearby weapons.

Using a Bow + Soul Strike is definitely a viable method and way more defensive than using a Queen's Escape. The main thing is though that your AW doesn't scale that well from gem levels compared to SRS and various other minion gems, and AW wouldn't benefit much from a +3 Bow as the +2 to level of socketed fire gems wouldn't have any effect on AW at all.

The way AW works is also fundamentally different than SRS. AW will aggro monsters away from you, while SRS and other minions generally don't. This adds a lot of safety to the build, you won't get hit nearly as much as if you were playing almost any other minion build, so while having a Soul Strike would be nice, you don't benefit from it nearly as much with AW.